Commentary

Ringing Phone Highly Valued By Business

According to a new report from dialogTech, thanks to smartphones and click-to-call, consumers are responding to search, social, display, and other digital ads and campaigns by calling businesses by the billions. These calls are also the most difficult for marketers to measure and optimize. Call attribution software is the solution, says the report.

Sometimes called call tracking, call analytics, call intelligence, or call insights, call attribution software provides complete visibility into how all your digital marketing channels drive call conversions, who those callers are, and their impact on revenue. It integrates with the marketing platforms you already use to track and optimize online interactions.

As digital marketing goes mobile, call conversions have skyrocketed. That’s because smartphones are, after all, still phones. And using a click-to-call button is the fastest and most natural way for consumers to connect with businesses.

Analyst firm BIA/Kelsey says  “… clicks and impressions, despite a sexier image and a decade of media adoration, aren’t as highly valued by many businesses as a ringing phone… ” 

Calls are the most valuable conversion for most businesses, says the report. They are the leads sales teams want most. When consumers call, it often indicates high purchasing intent, and a live conversation with someone calling you is a much stronger prospect than a web form submitted hours or days ago.

Calls have always been a critical part of the customer journey for industries with expensive, complex, or infrequent purchases, says the report. Industries like automotive, insurance, financial services, hospitality, and home services rely on calls to acquire customers, and smartphones have made generating those calls easier for digital marketers.

Mobile ads drive over 108 billion phone calls to US businesses in 2016, while calls to US businesses from mobile search will exceed 53 billion. Calls from search, social, and display advertising will exceed 162 billion in 2019, says the report. 40% of insurance purchases happen over the phone; 68% want to call a bank while researching purchases; 35% of hotel bookings are from phone calls. Calls are rated the best lead type by sales managers as calls convert to revenue 10 to 15 times more than web leads, says the report. (Sources:BIA/Kelsey, xAD, TravelClck)

Without an accurate picture of how many calls your digital marketing generates, the quality and outcome of those calls, and their impact on revenue, your ROI data may be grossly inaccurate, concludes the report.

Call attribution software enables you to track callers from your digital marketing back to the exact source (channel, referring URL, keyword search, digital ad, and website session) that drove the call. It also provides marketers with valuable data around who the caller is, and what happens on the call.

How Call Attribution Software Benefits Marketers

The Digital Advertising Team

  • Optimize for the digital ads and keywords driving customer calls with the same tools you use for clicks
  • Drive more conversions and revenue while lowering your customer acquisition costs
  • Prove the full impact of your digital programs on revenue
  • Know that you can drive X% more conversions and customers if your budget was increased by Y%
  • Optimize keyword bids and ad messaging for the words customers really use

The Web Team

  • Prove the complete impact of your website on sales by getting credit for customer calls
  • Increase sales by providing private offers to website visitors who called but didn’t become customers
  • Drive higher sales from your website by understanding what web pages and content led to every call
  • Improve your site’s conversion rate by including call conversions as a metric in A/B tests

The Analytics Team

  • Make smarter decisions by adding missing call conversion data to your analytics data
  • Understand the role calls play in the customer journey and their impact on revenue
  • See which marketing programs generate not only the most calls, but the most customers and revenue
  • Know exactly which marketing programs are most effective at getting new customers to call

The CMO

  • Make smarter decisions by adding missing call conversion
  • data to your analytics data
  • Understand the role calls play in the customer journey and their impact on revenue
  • See which marketing programs generate not only the most calls, but the most customers and revenue
  • Know exactly which marketing programs are most effective at getting new customers to call

For additional information from dialogTech, please visit here.

 

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